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Courtney Weatherburne, reporting
For these boys, playing a friendly midday match is just what they need to re-energize for their afternoon classes.

Others enjoy relaxing in the recreation room, even catching up on some reading.

Now it might seem like these kids didn't even leave their school compound but they did, they all went home for lunch.

45 kids between the ages 5 and 21 live at the Dorothy Menzies ChildCare Center in Belize City - including 10 special needs kids. It is the only place of comfort for them.

Hortence Augustine, Foster Mother, Dorothy Menzies ChildCare Center
"It is a residential home under the Department of Human services which caters to children that has been abandoned, neglected, abuse."

"It is a lot of trauma, they have been abused physically, sexually, they see violence , they have been victims of their own parents and relatives abusing them, they have seen other children got abused right in front of them, it is a lot, it's a lot for these children."

Although the childcare center provides education, counseling, food, shelter and health care for these kids - it takes so much more to raise a child.

Hortence Augustine, Foster Mother, Dorothy Menzies ChildCare Center
"The only thing that I think we lack a bit in is enough people to go around to care for, well not really care to love the children like you would love them in a home you know."

Courtney Weatherburne, 7News
"It's not the same."

Hortence Augustine
"It's not the same, it's not the same, yes you love them but you, it's...your time is limited with them."

But there is hope. You can give your all your time and your heart to these kids through the Foster Care and Adoption Campaign. It was first launched in 1996.

Lliani Arthurs, Director, Department of Human Services
"The Department of Human Services is proud to be re-launching our "Give your Heart to a Child" campaign and so we have tagged this campaign the give your Heart to a child 2."

"What we found through the years is a lot of people wanted babies and so we have had a pool of families that are able to take younger children but through the years what we have seen are challenges in the system that we have categories of children such as teenager, older children, sibling groups, and children with special needs that require special care and so this campaign has a focused approach in terms of those categories of children."

"What we do is do is what we call a home study interview with the foster families to assess their capacities, to look at their strengths , to look at what are their weaknesses , their fears that they have in terms of joining our programs and so we try to help to equip them to allay their fears and to let them know that we are looking for people that are mature , people who can be emotionally and spiritually present with the children, to understand the trauma and to orient them to the trauma these children go through so they can connect with these children , what we are appealing to people is that we don't necessarily need people who can provide just physical toys and a big house , what we need is people with big hearts."

And Denise and Joel Myer fit that description perfectly. They are originally from Seattle but have been living in Belize for 14 years. They adopted little Evangeline as a baby.

She and their other 2 boys have changed their lives forever.

Joel Myer, Father
"We actually, we have 3 children we have adopted from Belize. Each one has been different. One was a private adoption, one was a child - a ward of the state and the other one we did kind of foster to adopt so each one has been very different but they all have been such a huge blessing and the department been great and very helpful in it, it's a long process but it's worth it."

Lliani Arthurs, Director, Department of Human Services
"All of us as a community maybe we have a mother, father a grandparent that we can go to for Sunday dinner many of these children don't have those connections and so this campaign we want to foster those connections."

As we told you there are 225 kids living in institutions and 137 in foster care. Some kids have been living in institutions for almost 10 years and the foster mother Augustine says there is no way these kids should be out of outside a family setting so long. If you would like to learn more about the adoption process or foster care you can visit the Ministry of Human Development website at www.humandevelopment.gov.bz"